He attempted to go back to work, in order to support Briand's candidacy in the 1889 French legislative election, but his condition got worse again and he was forced to take two years off to recover.

[2] He also joined the French Workers' Party,[3] for which he acted as the secretary of its local section and with which he helped establish the Saint-Nazaire Bourse du Travail (English: Labour Exchange).

In September 1892, he attended a regional workers' congress, at which he proposed the general strike as a means for the party to achieve its aims.

In order to improve his material situation, his friend Georges Sorel solicited the aid of Jean Jaurès, who managed to secure Pelloutier with a job as a clerk from the trade minister Alexandre Millerand.

Despite worsening chronic pain, in September 1900, Pelloutier attended the FBT's congress, where he was forced to defend his government job and reaffirm his anti-statist principles.

[2] Pelloutier's theories were exceptionally important to the Revolutionary Syndicalism movement in Italy that appeared towards the end of the nineteenth century, and he is a source of major influence in this regard for Georges Sorel.

That same year saw the posthumous publication of his Histoire des bourses du travail, which formed the theoretical foundation for anarcho-syndicalism.